West Winging it through the final weeks of the campaign

[dreamshark]

For the past year or two I've been doggedly working my way through all 7 seasons of West Wing on Netflix. Just as the 2008 presidential campaign screeches to a climax I've arrived at the midpoint of Season 6, where the Santos/Vinnick presidential race kicks off. This is quite a stroke of serendipity, as there is quite a bit of overlap between reality and fiction.

Watching the fictional Santos give his acceptance speech about the Politics of Hope was almost spooky. I've been told that the parallels between Santos and Obama are far from accidental; apparently the writers have admitted that the Santos character was inspired by Obama. Considering that the episodes I'm watching now were written in 2004, that was pretty darned prescient.

But Santos isn't Obama - he's an individual in his own right. Watching the early episodes of the Santos campaign I was finding it hard to believe that any brand-new candidate would be so headstrong as to simply disregard the advice of his seasoned campaign advisers. Then I read this.

Oooookayyyy. Apparently Santos is an even MORE prescient conglomeration of Obama and Palin.

Comments

[lollardfish.livejournal.com]

There are a startling number of prescient comparisons. I don't know if Sorkin was thinking about Obama, but I doubt it. It's clear, though, that Vinnick was meant to be the John McCain of 2000 who we thought we knew, absent the POW story. A moderate sensible straight-talking non-social conservative.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

"I don't know if Sorkin was thinking about Obama, but I doubt it."

It wasn't Sorkin (who had left the series by the time Santos showed up) but somebody was. I googled "West Wing Obama" and found this:

http://blog.indecision2008.com/2008/02/27/the-west-wing-obama-and-plagiarism/